One crafty bitch…

Monthly Archives: June 2010

Not only did I add to my fabric stash last week, I came across some adorable lace zippers on a sewing blog (I can’t remember which one – I read quite a few). These zippers come from Taeco’s Etsy shop, and it looks like she’s got several in stock! I bought a few since shipping from Japan is pretty much the same for several as for one. That is my justification.

I’d love to make a yoked sleeveless cotton print dress with an adorable lace zipper insert. I don’t think I have time, but I did find the mojo to mix up No knead wheat bread last night at 1 a.m. when I got in from the airport, so maybe a bit of midnight sewing will happen.

In an earlier post I confessed that I lost a bet (eight years ago) to a friend who’s a talented potter. She’s a bit of a hoarder with her gorgeous pottery and I’ve only got one of her pieces in the 25 years we’ve known each other. Well back to the socks, when I nag her for a pot she always brings up the socks I owe here. To get back the moral high ground I finally (!) got around to making Jen her socks.

The pattern is Cookie A’s Cubist Socks which is free just by jumping through a very easy hoop or two. Very much worth it! The yarn is Cascade Yarns Heritage Paints in colorway 9883. I enjoyed both sock pattern and yarn, though I did change the heel flap to shortrow heels and toes. Of course! The shortrow change does interfere with the last bit of pointy pattern of the heel chart, but I don’t think that’s a biggy. I hate heel flaps, so losing the bit of pattern is a small loss. I think no one would even notice anyway.

So they’ll be gifted and I’ll hopefully get a pot in return. I mean moral high ground is good, but I’m after an amphora.

After a week of flying around to a dozen different cities, every one of them about 90 degrees and completely humid, I touched down in SFO to 68 degrees and fog just rolling in. Heaven! Since summer is here (officially) in this part of the world I ran amok in the garden with a pair of scissors. (Peonies courtesy of Trader Joe’s.) What’s a nicer way to celebrate a new season than some pretty posies around the house?

The other new pink in my life today are my nails – yes I’m becoming manicure obsessed. I decided to get rid of the acrylics, they worked for my hard on nails job, but I really am not a long nail girl. I did a bit of research and found a brand new product available that may just perfect for me. It’s a new UV gel polish that lasts two weeks without chipping and it’s only been available for three weeks, so why not give that a try? It’s CND Shellac, it doesn’t smell and after it’s cured you can’t smudge it and it comes off with acetone. No more dremmel filing and all that so I’ll see how I fare with it for the next two weeks. I think I may love it though.

Because my vacation is over, I thought I’d pick up my spirits with this last dress of my summer break.

This is Burda Style 7517 view A, described as a semi-fitted dress on the pattern envelope information. As descriptive as that information is, I think we can expand on that a bit. This dress is a boat neck, sleeveless A-line with neck and waist pleats in the front and neck darts and waist pleats in the front. There is a side seam zipper and I used an invisible zip.

I searched the stash for material that could delicately be molded into the creased bodice and I chose this poly crepe. As you can see, the neck and waist tucks are pretty much the only design feature of this dress. I have a 34 B bust and these tucks really emphasize the boobages. I think if my personal chestal area was on the large side, I would not choose this bodice style. That’s just me though.

I made no mods for this pattern, in fact I just looked at the finished measurements and guesstimated my size and started cutting. That worked out since I think it fits me pretty well.

I’m supposed to be having a Manhattan layover on Friday, so stay tuned for some fabric shopping. I should have time for a quick a.m. shop if all goes according to plan. Unfortunately JFK airport does not always cooperate. Fingers crossed!

It’s almost a handicap having too much time off. Almost. For me, it means I want to do EVERYTHING rather than finishing one thing and starting another. Add to that all the chores and tasks I put off when I’ve only got a few days off (like car stuff – ugh) so I’m proud of myself for focussing and making this dress.

I’m going to call this my “Suitcase Dress” because I can just toss it in my bag and leave it there. It’s a rayon/spandex knit and the pattern is Burda 7647 view B. It’s a super easy dress and I added lining so it’s not seethrough in the sun. Right, you can’t see my bits and pieces in this sun shot. Now I’ve got to scoot back into the house asap so I don’t get even a hint of a tan.

I chose this dress because of it’s shape. You can wear a bra with it (or not) and I made it long enough so you could wear it out and not have it look like a beach coverup. I wanted to line the skirt because I’ve noticed all my favorite knit dresses have linings. I couldn’t find any nylon tricot locally so I bought a half slip, cut off the elastic waistband and used that as a lining. It worked well and I looked like a real winner in Kohl’s lingerie department trying half slips on over my clothes and pulling them up to my empire line. Winner. Hey, it was $9 and I didn’t have to mailorder tricot.

Mods to this dress: added lining, no zipper (who needs a zipper with such a stretchy knit?), doubled the layers of the front bodice to reduce the chances of nip slips and bindings at neck and sleeves instead of the turn and stitch method in the instructions.

I noticed when this dress was all done that I’d cut the skirt pieces on the cross grain instead of the straight grain. That would be a huge problem in any other fabric than this rayon knit because it stretches pretty evenly both length- and cross-wise. Oh well, we’ll see what happens.

At last, something is complete. You see here Vogue 1170, a Rachel Comey blouse. I liked this pattern since it came out and finally got around to making the blouse. The skirt is adorable too, but is only 17″ long and would require a great deal of lengthening to make it wearable without exceedingly rude comments from the general public. So the blouse it was.

I used some green material from Fabrix, where the prices are right and the fabric content descriptions are vague at best. I surmised from the way this green stuff presses, that it’s a rayon/poly blend. Turns out, a perfect choice for this blouse.

Construction notes: all seams are narrow hemmed or French seamed. I know! Wherein I use the serger 99.9% of the time, it was rather fun to use more refined techniques. I was fortunate in my choice of fabric, as both of those seam types are made much easier with a fabric than takes a crease. The neck is finished with a bias band and is gorgeous – if I do say so myself. The fronts are cut on the bias and are rather large pattern pieces, so a big cutting table came in handy on this layout.

Please forgive the plethora of pictures for a simple blouse, but it’s a bit tricky to photograph and capture the details. This blouse is all about the details. Also, big hair and no makeup is the best you people get when I’m on vacation.

Next sewing project will use the serger, I don’t want her (the serger) to get peevish. I can’t decide between a light blue knit top or a violet knit dress – both easy and both Burda (my fave!)…

Eight years ago I lost a bet with my friend Jenny the potter. If I won I’d get her to make me a pot, if she won she’d get socks. Well I lost and here are the socks. Yes, I got right on that. Both of us have rather bad memories, but the other day we both remembered I owed her socks when I was banging on about how she’d made me one pot in the 20 years we’ve known each other.

P.s. Thanks for the font size feedback. Turns out when I looked into it, I can’t actually change the font size with my present free blog platform account. I could upgrade, learn some CSS and change it, but that’s just not going to happen. So changing the zoom level is the best solution…